


sooner or later (one of us must know)

by pyrrhlc



Series: archivist!sasha (love on a smaller stage) [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Sasha James, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not-Jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28192107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhlc/pseuds/pyrrhlc
Summary: Sooner or later one of us must knowThat I really did try to get close to youThere are a lot of things Martin is choosing not to say right now, for a multitude of reasons.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: archivist!sasha (love on a smaller stage) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692085
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	sooner or later (one of us must know)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiiro-kira](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kiiro-kira).



He is both a little put out and a little impressed that Jon knows how to cook. This in spite of the fact that he once came into work with his jumper inside out, ignoring Tim’s snort and Martin’s helpless watching, and in spite of all the numerous times Sasha had to bully him into leaving the office, that he had fallen asleep at his desk more times than Martin can ever count.

All of these things and he’s actually capable of boiling rice. Martin leans back against the counter of his own kitchen and watches as Jon carefully cuts up another onion, sliding the pieces into the frying pan on the stove with a knife, slow and methodical, because that, at least, he can understand.

Stubbornness, and precision, and now – this. All these other memories that Martin didn’t even know he had left, or should have, though they exist in place with memories of the other Jon, gentle and forthcoming, self-proclaimed lover of takeaways and rude jokes. He remembers that Jon, the fake and the oddity, but at the same time the range of frowns he’s seen pass over Jon’s face over the last few days – those are not unfamiliar. He does remember, in a sense. Or he feels like he does.

If his mind could stop thinking about it for a moment – if he were willing enough to accept the reality of the situation – he might also admit that his crush, so long absent, is back again, as easily if it never went away. And maybe it didn’t. Not for Jon, certainly, whose ten months underground he seems to remember not at all in the day.

They have become a couple of insomniacs in the early hours. Martin knows this well enough without ever confirming it – he wakes up and turns on his light, trying not to think about the worms, about the sticky footsteps Jane Prentiss left behind when she finally retreated, and opening the door softly finds a light shining across the hallway as bright as his own.

But they don’t talk about it. Things are tense enough as they are without adding late-night intimacy to the equation, though he knows it makes him a coward. Nobody has been there for Jon, and after probing and finding out he is as loosely gathered as Martin in terms of family and connections, people to know again, his discomfort increases.

Not that he goes into the living room at night. He doesn’t want to know the things Jon remembers when he isn’t thinking pointedly of anything but. He can see the strain it takes on him, in the morning when they eat breakfast in silence, but he doesn’t mention it. Four days into this, followed by three nights of bad dreams, and still Martin hasn’t said a word.

“Are you all right?”

He starts, refocusing on Jon, measuring out half a spoon of grated garlic without quite turning his head. His eyebrow is cocked, though, looking at Martin out of the corner of his eye in a way that makes it clear Martin’s daydreams have not passed unnoticed. He coughs and clears his throat, desperately trying to think of anything except how nice that yellow jumper looks, even covered in tomato.

“Fine,” he says, voice falsely cheery, and Jon scowls as he turns back to the frying pan, adding other herbs, chicken, something of a sauce. “Just – just thinking, really. You never seemed like much of a cook.”

“I’d hardly call this cooking,” Jon mutters, peering over at the rice. He risks another glance at Martin, like they’re not both trying to avoid looking at each other at all costs, all the time, and adds, “I only fear you’ve become a little too dependant on pasta sauces.”

Martin huffs indignantly. “It’s cheaper.”

“Yes, you said.”

Is that a smile? Martin stares at him for a moment, unfolds his arms, then refolds them again. “Was that a joke?”

“Just trying to keep it light,” Jon says, and he is, actually, smiling. If it weren’t for the tightness around his eyes, Martin thinks, or sharp shoulder blades visible even through the heavy folds of the jumper, he wouldn’t know. He never would have guessed that _Jon_ of all people would be the one so adept at hiding sleeplessness, being woken up by phantoms in the early hours, only to fall back exhausted once you realised you were safe.

And not – not even safe forever, because they were _real_. Though Martin himself thought he’d been doing a stellar enough job recently, not quite accepting that last bit, even after the not-Jon had revealed itself, even after all those weeks waiting at the hospital …

“I can’t help but feel, Martin, like you have something you want to tell me,” Jon is saying, and with a start Martin realises that he’s put a lid atop the frying pan and has turned to him, still holding the wooden spoon, as if that might make him look more impressive. There is a tiny piece of tomato on his face and Martin wants to kiss it away, nonsensically, absolutely livid at the prospect because he can’t _think_ , he can’t. “Or are you just in a world of your own tonight?”

Martin bites his lip, glances back at the stove to see the sauce bubbling merrily away. “Is it meant to do that?”

“Yes, for flavour. Don’t answer the question if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s not that, I just –” He sighs. “I don’t know. I thought we’d be at each other’s throats by now. I guess I don’t know how to handle you making curry and – and sleeping on my sofa and shopping for groceries together. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world.”

Jon blinks, and belatedly Martin thinks that he hadn’t meant to be that honest, but Jon doesn’t look angry exactly, just… “If it’s becoming inconvenient, I can go back home. At least I have a phone now.”

“No, that’s not what I meant?” He’s already seething silently over making that into a question, when he adds, “I just – I didn’t think you liked me that much, and now you’re cooking for us both, and I … I don’t get it, I suppose.”

Jon pauses for a long moment, not looking Martin in the eye, then turns back to the hob and lifts up the lid of the pan, stirring perhaps a degree more feverishly than is necessary. “So it’s not that you don’t want me here,” he says at last. “Or that I’m a nuisance.”

“You – no, of course not. You sleep on the sofa and you insisted on paying for last week’s groceries even after all that bullshit with your card. You’re not a nuisance. I just thought –”

“That I hated you,” Jon finishes quietly, another of those little sighs accompanying it. He reaches up the switch off the hob, turns to face him again, and Martin feels a little pang in his chest that even despite Jon’s general aversion to eye contact, he’s still trying so hard to get Martin to believe in his sincerity. “Martin, I don’t hate you. I would probably be dead, or worse, if you and Melanie hadn’t come looking for me. I’m – very grateful for that.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Martin argues, after a very uncertain pause. “I’m talking about before. When you were, actually, really horrible at times. Not just about the tea, but about me in general. When you were helping Sasha out with the recordings that one time, for example, and you –”

“I remember,” Jon interrupts, a very strange sort of look on his face that Martin can’t quite interpret – regret, perhaps? No, not regret. That would be silly. “And I can only apologise for being – well, an ass.” Another sigh. “I was trying very hard not to treat the Institute as anything more than a job, I suppose, but that’s not an excuse. Everything about the tea in particular, that was – that was definitely a lie.”

“So you do like my tea?”

That smile again, quiet and tentative. “Is that the only thing you took away from that,” he says back, not quite a question, because he seems too afraid of asking those, even now. “Yes, of course I do. I would’ve thought the last few days made that quite evident.”

“It’s because you use words like that,” Martin argues back, if only to see that tentative smile crack open a little wider, all other worries and fears forgotten for the time being, if only for a moment. “It makes you sound like an asshole, and then Tim ends up picking a fight with you, and total chaos ensues.”

The smile drops. “Have you heard back from him, since?”

A clatter of dishes and the kettle being switched on as Martin ducks his head. Stupid, he thinks. Stupid.

“No,” he says, watching Jon quietly plate up. “Nothing from him, or Elias. Nothing on Sasha.”

He picks up two glasses and steps froward to run them under the tap, while Jon rummages around for cutlery, before sliding the plates across the counter to move to the table. Strange how he now knows Martin’s kitchen even better than he does, though Martin finds he doesn’t really mind it.

“I find it very hard to believe she had anything to do with what happened to Gertrude,” Jon says at last, a pensive silence hanging round them as them both pull up chairs, one previously unused up until four days ago. “And as for the other man –”

“I’m sorry,” Martin says, watching him. “I probably should have waited to tell you.”

“Until when, exactly?” Jon challenges, but there is little heat in his voice. “It doesn’t matter. It explained rather a lot, actually – particularly when it came to you.”

“Me?”

Jon puts down his fork with a swallow. “Well, frankly I find it hard to imagine the you of ten months ago calling me an asshole, or anything you said back at the flat. Not quite as much of a people-pleaser now, are you?”

There is just enough of a bite in Jon’s words that puts him in the mind of those first few days at the office, when Sasha was just made Archivist and they’d had to rearrange their desks. Tim had looked glum for most of the morning, and by the end of the work day Martin had understood why.

He swallows down a mouthful of the curry, trying not to show his surprise at how nice it tastes, when considering the meagre ingredients they’d brought back from the shop. “No,” he says at last. “I suppose not. There are things out there, I guess, that don’t really care either way if you’re trying to impress them.” He smiles thinly. “Some advantages to being attacked by killer worms, I suppose.”

“Some disadvantages, too,” Jon grumbles, but the next look he flashes at Martin is uneasy, as if he doesn’t quite know where he stands. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that, while I – while everyone was gone.”

He sounds genuinely sorry, Martin thinks, though it makes no sense as to why. “It’s not your fault,” he says, the food on his plate temporarily forgotten. “I mean, sure, finding Gertrude’s body under the Institute was a shock, but it’s not like it had anything to do with you, is it?” He trailed off, biting his lip. “I don’t know what I’m going to say, exactly, when Sasha comes back.”

Another of those looks. Martin is going to go crazy if Jon keeps looking at him like that, with that same quiet intensity he’s sure didn’t belong to the person he used to know.

“Do you want to go back?” he asks him, quietly, thoughtfully, and something in Martin’s chest concertinas a little, at this idea of knowing someone and not knowing them, of wanting to know them better despite all the risks that come with exposing yourself like that. He shouldn’t be doing this. He really shouldn’t, but every moment they spend together is making it harder and harder to remember why he puts up so many walls in the first place.

“To the Institute? I mean, I suppose. It’s my job, after all. And I kind of need the money.”

Jon’s eyes drop away from him to the table. “Even now? Knowing there are things in the world that can kill us?”

“A car crash or a heart attack can kill you just as easily,” he says back, because he has to. “We can’t live our lives avoiding everything that might hurt us.”

He can’t explain the big, scary, terrible, all-encompassing feeling that’s sitting in his chest, pricking holes in his lungs, his breath winding out of him like a red spool of thread. He’s trying to run away from himself but his self just keeps catching up, leaping ahead, cutting him off at the next corner, forcing them to take a left when they should be going right, away, away from all of this.

He doesn’t know how to explain to Jon that he feels like there isn’t a choice – doesn’t know if he can even explain it to himself. All he knows is that there’s a part of him well ahead of the rest of him, always looking, always making those important decisions in advance, and he can’t do anything about it. Most days it makes him feel simply helpless, but today it makes him feel sick. He pushes his plate away, sits there biting his lip.

“You realise there’s a thing called degrees,” Jon says, still gentle, still looking at him like he knows and doesn’t know Martin in equal measure, and God, it seems so unfair to have their experiences be a mirror, two people on opposite sides of the glass. He wants to claw his way through to Jon, but he can’t, he can’t. He’s stuck here on his own and he doesn’t know what the hell to do about it. Doesn’t know if he should be doing anything, if that’s even allowed.

Jon’s mouth pushes its way down into a frown, lines forming at the corners, dark skin gently scarred from things he hasn’t been there for. Things that have hollowed them both.

“If you were asking me, I would choose the car crash over the evil eldritch entity, every time.”

Martin can’t help it; he snorts. “I would choose living.”

“Yes, well, ideally everyone would choose that. I’m just pointing out that being a, a car salesman, let’s say, is a lot less dangerous than working in the Archives.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Jon’s face closes in on itself. He doesn’t protest, doesn’t try to argue his point any further, and that – yeah, that doesn’t right with his memory of Jon – the real Jon – in the least. Tenacious, stubborn, without any respect for leaving something alone, that was Jon. This is something strange and new and altogether foreign. Melding in the middle, somewhere between imagined and real, a trick of his mind.

“OK. I’m sorry.”

He concludes that Jon should probably move out of his flat as soon as possible, for both their sakes, or else Martin really might start losing his mind.

*

He wakes up from his usual nightmare to the sound of Jon screaming.

“Oh, Christ,” he mutters, already scrambling for the light next to his bed, his slippers neatly placed beside the bedside drawers but he ignores them, pushing open his bedroom door and padding across the hallway to the living room, door ajar, darkness snaking beneath the gap, and all the while he can feel his heartbeat thundering a bullet in his chest, his pulse hiding in his hands as he clutches them into fists. And all of it, all of it undercut by shuddering breaths, a gasp of pain, a man having a nightmare on the other side.

It’s never been like this before. Martin wonders if it’s a sign – of what, he’d be hard-pressed to say.

He thinks briefly about a book he borrowed from the library once, about haunted houses being a metaphor for people, for all their uncanny demons and unexplored crannies, dusty cobwebbed attics, places even the person themselves never went in, and then –

There’s nothing past that thought. He pushes open the door.

“Jon. Jon, it’s me. Wake up.”

The huddled pile of blankets on the sofa doesn’t respond, just jerks again, woolly legs curling under woolly arms, shaking, an archetypal example of a nightmare. Martin spares a moment to think about how much he misses this comforter, the one nice thing he’s bought for himself in years and years, how much he misses having it on his bed, then crouches down in front of Jon and touches a hand to his face.

Gently, steady, like directing a boat in a stormy sea. Jon twitches as Martin’s fingers trace his jaw, his thin hard-weathered face, his pulse rabbiting along as much as Martin’s own. His sleeping face should look peaceful, but instead he looks aggravated, spring-board ready, prone to jumping out of windows in the middle of the night. It must be a pretty bad dream.

“Jon? Can you hear me?”

Most people – not Martin, but most people – wake up slowly: Jon lurches into wakefulness like someone’s jabbed a pin into his spine. His wide brown eyes stare at nothing for a moment, staring past Martin and through Martin, taking in every detail of the wall he’s blocking with his shoulders, and then they settle, drifting down like dandelion seed to land on him, and his stare is so intense that Martin’s gaze drops to his lips without even thinking about it. He’s so tired of feeling like he insides are made of nothing more stable than sand. He’s so tired of all the things this ridiculous world can do to them.

“Hi,” he says, hoarsely, because Jon’s gaze is withdrawing into itself now and Martin knows too damn well what he’s thinking, that he’s crossed some kind of line coming into here at night, forcing them to know one another more than they could comfortably be known. “Do you, uh, want a drink or something? Water?”

Jon’s eyes dart entirely away now, ashamed and brimming with it. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s none of that in the fridge. It’s water or day-old milk.”

Jon’s eyes flit to him briefly again, mouth moving silently like he’s trying to work himself up into saying something, except he doesn’t quite want to, and Martin doesn’t really want to hear it either. When did they become such solid shadows of themselves? For Jon that question might be easy, losing himself somewhere under the Institute, in snaking tunnels, but Martin has no idea. He doesn’t quite remember the moment when things started to go wrong for him, the moment he started to slip, ordinary life falling away like a husk. He wants that back. He wants groceries and a nice comforter at the end of his bed and he wants—

As ashamed as he is to admit it, he wants Jon. In the same way a forest yearns after a forest fire, he wants to put his lips on his lips, feel the rough rasp of stubble under his hands, the race of Jon’s pulse gripped again in his fingers. It’s ridiculous, inappropriate and immature. He should discard the thought, banish it to the back of his mind, except that he can’t.

Too late, he realises his hand is still braced on Jon’s cheek. He whips his fingers back like they’re wildfire themselves, toxic, and forces himself to swallow.

“Jon?”

Jon swallows, lifts a hand to his cheek like he can still feel like the ghost of Martin’s fingers there and this, this right here is why he always ignores the living room light, the lighthouse that beckons him closer, because goddammit if Martin doesn’t know his weaknesses well enough to call a bad situation when he sees it. This. This, right here, is a bad situation.

He is not stepping out of it. Right now feels he approximately waist-deep in whatever feeling Jon’s eyes make him feel. He doesn’t know if stepping out will help.

He makes a guess that it probably won’t. It’s too late. It was too late from the moment Melanie plunged the axe into the stupid table and split it in two. Perhaps he should go out and take a course on learning how to think with his head, rather than his heart.

“Water,” Jon says slowly, then stops again, eyes meeting, as if trying to check this isn’t a dream. “Water would be – nice.”

“Right. OK.”

Part of him dreads turning his back on Jon, in a completely ridiculous, illogical way – as if he might up and disappear in the few moments it takes Martin to run a glass under the tap, the water so cold that it’s shocking, a violation of the boundary between gentle night and awful day. But the trembling of his hands gives him away in any case. Martin turns off the tap, pads back over to the sofa, and hands Jon the glass.

“Here.”

“Thank you.”

There’s a moment where he thinks this fragile tableau of the two of them will last an aeon – Jon’s thin fingers wrapped around a glass beading moisture on the rim, Martin standing useless, facing his own sofa, not knowing what to do in his own flat. Then Jon lifts up the glass to take a sip, and the spell holding them in place is broken. Martin sighs and sits down on the floor, his back against the sofa.

It’s easier this way. He can talk to Jon without looking at him, like this. It’ll help preserve the last few bits of his sanity from going where he might never find them again, scattered across the rug, under the chair, like the little dust animals he used to believe lived under his mother’s washing machine.

The only thing he can hear is the soft sound of Jon’s breathing. He can’t stand it.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Martin.”

“Mm,” he replies, non-committal, then: “You didn’t. And you know that.”

Jon makes a soft sort of wounded sound in the back of his throat. “Bad dreams,” he says, not quite a statement, but not quite a question either. Martin answers it anyway.

“Yes.”

“About the Institute, I assume.”

He doesn’t want to be here. “Sometimes.”

He hears rather than sees Jon take another sip of water. It’s tentative, agonisingly aware, like it’s something he feels like he has to savour. Martin wishes he wouldn’t. He can’t stop himself from picturing the slim shape of Jon’s throat, his fingers wrapped in Jon’s pulse, alive, alive, alive.

A thought occurs to him and he squeezes his eyes shut. His mother would hate him for all of this. Down to the last detail, she would hate him for everything: for being weak, for missing her, for falling in love with something that isn’t real. He feels half-formed himself, nebulous, like he might be the ghost after all, the black shadow that haunts his mother’s memory, rather than the reverse. It’s a horrible way to feel.

It’s a good job Jon can’t see his face right now, he thinks.

“And other times?”

He’s forced out of his reverie by Jon’s shuffling form, sitting up, the sofa protesting at the late hour, the way all old things with springs do. “What?”

“The other dreams,” Jon prompts, and his voice doesn’t sound like Jon’s voice. It’s tired, trembling like an aspen leaf, too intimate for his shaky heart. “Do you dream about what happened?”

He does, sometimes, dream about Jane Prentiss. He dreams about finding Gertrude under the Institute, the endless corridors, dried blood on uneven flagstones. Mostly these dreams are silent, dredged of colour, incomprehensible upon waking. He has grown used to these kinds of dreams.

To Jon, he says, “I dream about my mother.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Jon doesn’t ask him to. Just sighs in that not-quite-real voice, and takes another sip of water.

“I dream about spiders. My gran, not so much.” There’s a pause, like he might be gazing at the back of Martin’s head, then he adds, “I’m sorry, Martin.”

“About what?”

Jon inhales, breathes out slowly through his mouth. “I don’t know. I just know that I am.”

Martin nods, even though it doesn’t make sense. “Yeah.”

He should be using this moment – if he would only dare to use this moment – to ask Jon exactly what his nightmare had been about, to see if he might fix it, or banish back under the sofa where it belongs. Spiders or tunnels, darkness, being alive or not alive, forgetting everything, remembering things you would rather have stayed buried. It’s hard to imagine something that would make Jon scream like that – not just fear, but true terror.

Martin has never woken shouting from nightmares, as far as he’s aware. His mother had needed him to be quiet, and he had risen to the challenge wonderfully. He wakes up with limbs tangled in the sheets and a great iron fist clutching at his heart, but he doesn’t make a sound. There wouldn’t be any point.

“Would you sit with me?” Jon asks, interrupting his thoughts for the second time. Martin makes the mistake of twisting round to look at him.

“I’m already sat here.”

“You’re sat on the floor,” Jon points out, “which, in my opinion, is not the same thing at all.”

Martin sighs, stays where he is for a stubborn moment longer. “It’s perfectly comfortable,” he says, his eyes trained on a coffee ring branded into the carpet. “I like it.”

“Just get on the sofa, Martin.”

He sounds tired, so Martin acquiesces.

He remembers finding this sofa in the charity shop. It’s a nice brown fabric that’s meant to be patterned but is now balding on the arms, just big enough for two people to sit together if they don’t mind their knees touching. Martin has never had anyone over to share it before.

He isn’t sure if this would have been his first choice.

He expects Jon to say something, but instead he just puts his head on Martin’s shoulder, an easy fit, two puzzles pieces from different boxes. It shouldn’t feel comforting, but it does.

“I don’t know why you’re angry at me,” Jon admits, the words half-mumbled, half a shamed whisper, like he doesn’t really want to say it, or Martin to hear, but they’ve both crossed a line tonight and it doesn’t like there’s any going back after this. “I hope I can fix it. I would like to fix it.”

All of this was a lot easier before he knew what Jon was really like, Martin thinks. Wordlessly, he wraps his arm around Jon’s shoulders and holds it there, bracing himself for the explosion. When it doesn’t come, he sighs.

“I’m not angry at you, Jon.”

“I think you are. I just don’t think you realise it.” He swallows, shifting his shoulders slightly, but he doesn’t move out of Martin’s reach the way Martin keeps moving out of Jon’s. His dandelion hair is tickling Martin’s cheek. “You wanted me to be different. Or dead, maybe.”

“That’s the last thing I wanted.”

“Well. You at least didn’t want this. Not much of a flatmate, am I?”

When did they become such pallid versions of themselves, he thinks. Out loud, he says, “I’ve had worse.”

“Mm. Jane Prentiss.”

“Not funny, Jon.”

Jon laughs half-heartedly, keeps his head tucked inwards. One long hand plays absently with the ribbed edge of his jumper.

“You made this, didn’t you,” he says, and like before this isn’t quite a question either. “I can tell.”

“Yeah.” He misses a beat, adds, “It was meant to go the charity shop. Sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry. I like it. Was it yours?”

Martin can’t help it; he snorts. “No, Jon, that tiny jumper would never fit me. It was for my mother.”

It’s not like the room holds its breath as he says it, or anything, but Martin feels a sense of release even so. He shouldn’t, because it’s Jon and Jon doesn’t need to know any of this, but it’s not… bad. To let some of it go. To accept that he can.

Jon seems to understand without saying anything else, which Martin is also very grateful for.

“Some people are like that. They can’t see the value of things as they’re given. Their loss.” He sighs, eyes flicking from the jumper to Martin, a light rustle of fabric as he moves closer without actually appearing to. “You don’t know what to do with me when I’m not being an ass, do you.”

“Not at all.”

“Fair enough. Me neither.” He’s silent for a moment, the room around them so still that Martin swears he can his own heart, beating feverishly in his chest. He wonders if Jon can hear it too – if Jon’s heart is doing the same. Jon clears his throat. “Bluster seems to have lost its shine, after everything that’s happened. Now you’re the angry one and I’m the quiet one.”

Martin snorts again. “Give it time. You’ve yet to see how Sasha’s organised the Archives. There’s coloured cue cards now.”

“Yet more evidence that Sasha isn’t a cold-blooded killer, then.”

As is usual with murder, the mention of it seems to bring their conversation to a standstill. But still Martin doesn’t move. The comforter is right there, and it’s warm.

And Jon’s head is on his shoulder, almost like he trusts Martin, and Martin doesn’t know how he should feel about that. Relieved, perhaps, but he doesn’t quite feel relieved. There are snakes writhing in his gut that he can’t silence, because he doesn’t know what they want.

“She’ll come back,” he says, and for the first time realises he might actually believe it, just a little. Tim does. There’s no reason he shouldn’t. “And when she does, I’ll… I’ll be there. I know this whole thing isn’t over with.”

Jon’s voice on his shoulder is both muffled and miserable. “Despite the danger.”

“Yes.”

A deep sigh that he feels in his bones. “Fair enough. If I was in your place, I would probably do the same. I would have gone into the tunnels too, I think, and faced that thing.”

Martin frowns. “What, if you were me? You’d come get me?”

He says in lightly enough, but Jon straightens up anyway, Martin’s hand falling from his back as he turns his eyes on his, the same murky brown that has kept Martin up at night for almost a year now. So long, trying to remember, and here they are, finally real.

“Yes,” Jon says, in that same strange, sleep-soft voice, which maybe doesn’t have so much to do with sleep after all as the fact that he’s looking at Martin and no-one else. “Yes, of course I would come and get you. Why wouldn’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> cue a very frantic phone call from tim about sasha turning up on his doorstep
> 
> and that's it! this turned out to be more or less a martin character study but i'm ok w that. i like to think this plays out w martin and jon going back to the institute to help sasha&tim only to get roped into the unknowing but. hey. if you want to picture them in marital bliss instead of eternal kayaking together that's ok too.
> 
> thank u for reading, pls leave kudos and/or a comment if you have a sec! makes me feel loved and appreciated etc. stay safe over the holiday period everyone <3


End file.
